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Clarence Collingwood
In Biggles and the Deep Blue Sea, Clarence Collingwood was an ex-R.A.F. pilot turned opal prospector, and the main protagonist in the story. Collingwood was an Australian. As a child, his father had taken him on a long road trip to visit a relative. They passed through and spent the night at Cooper Pedy where miners known as "gougers" prospected for opals. A "gouger" gave Collingwood an opal for good luck and from then on he had been hooked. His one ambition was to become a "gouger". Even at school in Britain, he would often look at his opal and dream of the future. Opals were unpopular because it was believed to bring bad luck, but Collingwood did not believe it, When World War Two came, he joined the R.A.F. and was, for a time, a bomber pilot. He was badly wounded during a raid and the injury left him with heart trouble which landed him with light duties. He was sent to take charge of a care-and-maintenance party to set up and manage a landing strip at Jean Bonney Island in the Bay of Bengal. With not much to do on the island, Collingwood went exploring and found, to his surprise, opals in the mud in a hollow at one end of the island. After the war, Collingwood wanted to return to Jean Bonney. For a long time he couldn't raise the money but he struck lucky some 12 months before the events in the book. He met a fellow R.A.F. pilot Murdo Mackay who had flown into the airstrip. Mackay worked for Indian Airlines and was based in Calcutta. He also had his own private plane and agreed to fly Collingwood out to the island and then return for him six months later. In exchange, Mackay would get half of whatever booty Collingwood found. About a month after arriving at Jean Bonney, an Arab dhow landed a party of men there to set up a hemp plantation. They were surprised to see Collingwood there and things became tense. Fortunately, among the men was one named Ali. He had been one of the labourers who had built the airstrip and spoke some English. With his help, Collingwood negotiated a compromise. They would ignore each other and not report on what the other was doing. The dhow planted the hemp and left Ali behind to tend the crop. After a time, Collingowood offered some food to Ali in exchange for his help to dig for opals. When Biggles and Algy arrived at Jean Bonney, Collingwood was gruff to the point of being rude. He offered them no welcome and would not reveal what he was doing. He would only say that he was a biologist and wanted to be left alone. He was not even impressed when Biggles told him he was from Scotland Yard and threatened to arrest him. His discourteous manner only made Biggles all the more determined to find out what he was up to. For some reason not mentioned in the book, Collingwood seemed to have a change of heart and became more accommodating. Later, Biggles returned from a tour of the island to find Collingwood helping Algy secure the aircraft against an impending storm. Collingwood was however horrified to hear that Biggles had just gone out to chop down the hemp plantation. The dhow would soon return, he said, and the Arabs on board would surely kill Biggles. He himself might be killed too. As he was potentially in trouble with the Arabs and as there was a large storm coming, Collingwood offered Biggles and Algy the shelter of his nissen hut. There he told them his story, stressing that he was not digging for opals for the money but for their intrinsic beauty. He also told Biggles and Algy that if their Gadfly was damaged by the hailstorm, they could ride back to India with Mackay when he showed up on his next resupply run. Biggles was mostly convinced about his sincerity. After the storm ended, Collingwood, Biggles and Algy went out in search of Ali and found him trapped by a landslide inside the opal mine and dug him out. However, Ali returned the favour by murdering Collingwood that night and making off with his box of opals. Biggles was not as sympathetic to Collingwood as he was with another injured war veteran and ex-pilot Cedric Adrian Fortescue who was his main antagonist in Biggles and the Black Mask. Biggles was peeved that Collingwood did not welcome them with the courtesy that he thought aviators accorded one another. Collingwood also did not warn them about the decapod which surfaced in the night to threaten their amphibian moored in the lagoon. By Biggles' code, airmen owed each other that much, as he amply demonstrated when he and Algy cleared the runway at the end of the story, in case Mackay should return to the island. Category:Biggles characters Category:People Category:Air Police era characters